August 10, 2190
We approach the foot of the mountains and realize that we need to go across, below or through the mountain. We find out from some salamanders that there is a guy in the caves. The humanoid eats the salamanders, so the salamander does not go through the caves anymore. We use Silence spells to approach him. The man has red hair.
“Thanks. Tell the people back Door Flower. Do not attack Memory of Breath. Tell the navy in Door Flower. Tell them what happened to Inton Silversmith.”

August 11, 2190
Nothing happens.

August 12, 2190
[Session 39] We find a river. As we cross on our bridge, an alligator tries to jump and bite Arthur but smacks into the bridge.

August 14, 2190
Three trolls jump into camp and grab Raybur and Serlisse and attack Conrhia. I splatter Raybur’s troll with Radiance for 21. Talarian’s hawk attacks Raybur’s troll for 10 with each claw. Serlisse’s hawks try to protect her and only one claw hits for 14 points of damage. End of segment 4 Zephram hits for 7 points of fire damage on Raybur’s troll. Phyllis does 27 points of damage on Conrhia’s troll. Fred does 18 on Conrhia’s from a back stab. Talarian also hits it for 36. It drops.
Arthur hits Serlisse’s troll for 21 points and a single wound. Phyllis hits Serlisse’s for another 10 points with Severance. As the trolls started to run Talarian pounds Raybur’s for another 18, which drops it. The hawks do 9 points of damage. I shoot Serlisse’s for 4 points of damage. Phyllis hits for 25 more points.
One comes back for Conrhia for 19 points of damage. Talarian smashes it back down.

August 15, 2190
We go on a side jaunt to try to find the trolls.

August 16, 2190
Some smart arse puts beetle larvae into my hair.

August 17, 2190
We find a clearing that appears like something negative energy has cleared it. We can see some dinosaur bones are in the clearing. There is some large 8’x8’x10’ metallic object in the middle of the clearing. We find a raptor skeleton 5 feet from the edge. There are no signs of injuries, just bones.
You walk in and slow down and then vanish. The angry unnatural things show up but he has no idea how many things or how big they are.
We move on without figuring it out. Schnelp says they are evil spirits.

August 19, 2190
We spot the first landmark from Chip. There is an overgrown path.

August 23, 2190
The birds sight a stone building on the right side of the valley near one of the larger streams. The river has now built up and the river runs through it instead of around. There is a stone statue of a dwarf standing against the wall. There is a huge rock crystal standing on a pedestal. The tower is an empty shell now. A face appears in the stream 120 feet away from the tower. It speaks in Pixie. “Hello, I. You seem to be dwarves and other peoplings. I am a water spirit. Long ago I lived here and life was good and I was a friend of the dwarves. Something has gone wrong. The stone automaton has gone dormant and the mud is now hostile. If you could get rid of the hostile mud, I’d be grateful. It rises up and throws dirt at me and slows me down. I can’t leave the water so I can’t leave to go to the upper parts of the stream. The automaton keeps non-dwarves out the tower.
“The sand is probably from magical buildings that have eroded and now has come to life. There seem to be 6 of them. They can throw mud 50 to 60 feet.”
We prepare a rockslide to try to divert the stream to dry out the mud around the creatures.

August 24, 2190
On the third try the landslide diverts the river. It’s bigger than a standard wayhouse, but definitely of dwarven architecture. Talarian draws them out and Serlisse splatters them with four lightning bolts.
The dwarves head to the tower after we Destroy some of the water to dry the mud. The statue and the crystal are both highly magical. There are some steps that separate the back from the front. It is a statue of Dumatheon with a hammer. He is the god of miners and secrets. It is almost more like a temple than a wayhouse. It doesn’t have an altar but is set up in a place like an altar. It looks like general praises to Dumatheon are engraved around here. There are signs that a secret compartment has been emptied. The covering stone has been removed. The crystal is very large and spheroid with lots of lines through it. It looks like quartz crystal with precious gem lines inside.
The water spirit tells that there are Wyverns that live here. There are two strange taciturn rock spirits that live up the in hills. The great stone statue rises up and crushes any non-dwarves who enter the tower.
There is a home of nasty fire creatures a couple of miles in the mountain. They live by the stream, which doesn’t run with the dwarven passage. She likes gems and traded the non-gems with an orc about three years ago. There is an aboveground road that also heads to the mainland. She could turn one of us to water each day and escort that one to the dwarven passage, but there are 10 of us.
Raybur goes in and tries to peer into the stone and he falls over in a coma.
It is a disposable missile shield item. It doesn’t have much magic left. Serlisse will wear it.
When I try to Remove Curse from Raybur, I realize that there is nothing there. When Fred tries to Dispel the stone, a mattock comes flying out at him and knocks him 18 feet back while doing 18 points of damage.
The stone was a seeing device that allowed him to see vast distances. He saw the Spinning Leaf is a square sailed, dragon shaped ship with draconic language words saying Spinning Leaf on the aft. About twenty or thirty years ago, the Tangg Lord’s ships looked this way. One was dragged into Teft. They could cloak themselves.
The Dwarven city is a large citadel sitting on a coastline with flying banners. The edges of the city were odd. The go west said that the doors will open into a large tunnel. There is a cave in near a crevasse. We need to go past the bronze dwarven figures with flame-like hair, then down a tunnel near a sluice.
We hear some rumbling noises and now we are surrounded by a retaining wall of rocks. We hear a voice from above. It has been 175 years since they have been paid their 1000 gold piece tribute. It has been only the last fifteen years that they were not paid and then they were to have been allowed to leave. These are not even the same type of dwarves.
We figure out how much we have. We have 50 cn of mithril dust, they want gold eventually or other precious metals. Gems can be taken for initial payment, but they want precious metals. Eventually we convince them that the best option for them and us are to let us pass and come back when we can to pay for the 15,000 gold that the other dwarves still owe them. The also offer to let us pass and return with the 15k and “an overage” for them to defend the entrance to the tunnel. They think that there should be some ore left in the tunnel from the gold mine that the dwarves used to work.
The real issues that seem to be relevant are that we only have a few days left before the Overlords catch up to us and the gold will be most likely in the form of ore not bars and if the ore is as high as 50%, we will have to carry 30kcn of ore back to them before the Overlords arrive.

August 2, 2190
We spot three ogres in armor and insignia. They are muddy and demand food to let us pass. Way off in the mountains is a big army. The giants will make us join the army. They have heard that there is a land of free ogres here.
There is a road over the mountains. The talking rocks guard the road and demanded all their money to let them pass.
They decide to run as the party argues about what to do and we have the blood hawks bring them down in a shower of gruesomeness.

[Session 38, 2/7/2004]

August 3, 2190
We find two huge statues facing each other across some ruined roadway. They are 8 feet tall, hooded grim reapers. They are damaged and vine covered. They have only 3 fingers on each hand. They might be double sized Ancients. They are holding swords in resting positions. Raybur spots something magical behind one of them. It is a piece of one the statues. It looks like a piece of the shoulder of one of them. It is low magic and the statues are high magic. It is a pale stone, which is unlike most of the orkish constructions.
Miraculously, Faffner spots that there was circular building near here as if one of the Ancients’ Tooth Buildings was razed. The remnants are 10 to 20 feet high. It looks like it is just the very top of the structure after a massive landslide.
Serlisse speaks with the three rats living there. There is a big room where BAM and you are really flat. The rats agree to let us have half of the shiny stuff for the food. This was a wizard’s stuff that has rotted away to mostly nothing.
The magical items are a bracelet (looks kind of like a watchband but not stretchy), 2 rings and a brooch. There are also 5 rubies (500 gp each) and a non-magical gold ring with three small rubies (400 gp maybe) and 2 corroded silver keys (maybe 5 gp each).
We also uncover a staircase. The walls are low magic. One of the rings is high magic and the other stuff is low. We find a corroded silver dagger.

We descend into an intact basement with little cubby holes around the room, but it is mainly empty with no exits. It is about 30 feet in diameter and 20 feet high. It looks like paper fragments in the cubby holes. There seems to be about 500 cubby holes. There are some larger cubby holes with jars. There are skeletons of small animals strewn about, so it may or may not be magical pest control. Raybur gets hit very hard for 33 points of damage and a triple wound.
Arthur gets whacked viciously when he sticks a branch into the room. Small deer-like creatures appear to have been moving around inside. When Fred speaks in Runic IV, we hear some twittering. When she asks about releasing them, she gets hit by a rock in the forehead.
I think that these are Invisible Stalkers. They primarily backstab cracking heads open. We decide to go for a stealth assault using the Ethereal Blade in case that helps.

August 4, 2190
Schnelp determines that it is a Ring of Wizardry. It doubles Fred’s first level spells.
Zephram is able to retrieve 3 sets of potions. The first set is labeled Healing potions, Summer 122 AQ. Extra Healing and Extra Healing are the other two sets. Potions seem to get better with age unless the seals have cracked. Six of the extra healing potions are still good. The longevity and flying potions are all bad. Eventually Zephram retrieves three scrolls.

August 5, 2190
Scroll Number One is Lightning Bolt Straight Through, Level 13. Scroll Number Two is Invisible Stalker, Wall of Stone, Level 12. Scroll Number Three is Contact Other Plane, Level 13.

August 6, 2190
We see four Carnivorous Apes. Serlisse threatens them and they leave.

August 8, 2190
We find two smaller Deathzillas. We back off slowly. They ignore us.
In size order, they have been the one in the temple at New Teft was the smallest, Precious and the smaller one here and then the ones at the river near Asheton and the larger one here.

August 9, 2190
We find dead orkish adventurers. It has been months not years. They were killed with swords and scavenged after the fact. We find another magic dagger, 123 fire giant gp, 19 fg sp and a statuette of a tiny 4 armed skeleton tied together with wire and ruby eyes. The wire looks like it is mithril, but not magical. We also find two leather scroll tubes that need to be repaired.
Talarian’s Blood Hawk attacks him when it returns. It seems that the dagger we picked up is an avian bane.
Before long a huge skeleton that looks like the statuette comes and kicks the crap out of Arthur. He gets knocked to -10. Phyllis gets smacked about as well. Fred’s Dispel Magic freezes the skeleton and Sputnik’s Death’s Door brings Arthur back up to 0. Sputnik pours an Extra Healing potion down Arthur and he gets 20 hit points back but his strength drops and . Arthur loses 5 hit points permanently.

“Hello friends, we haven’t seen you this millennium. I am weird, low rumbling. Who are you? My work is important to me.” An 8 foot diameter boulder rolls up and holes appear for features. He continues to converse. He knows about a dwarven city. This was an orkish city. “The stubborn ones all died. They said they were far-away mountains.” An underground tunnel runs through the isthmus. His parents live there.
The other city is Iron Deep. The Corner Stone Clan can and visited him sometimes. Orkish invasions may have been the reason the dwarves vanished.

August 10, 2190
We approach the foot of the mountains and realize that we need to go across, below or through the mountain. We find out from some salamanders that there is a guy in the caves. The humanoid eats the salamanders, so the salamander does not go through the caves anymore. We use Silence spells to approach him. The man has red hair.
“Thanks. Tell the people back Door Flower. Do not attack Memory of Breath. Tell the navy in Door Flower. Tell them what happened to Inton Silversmith.”